Geography plays an important part in creating customized and targeted marketing campaigns, and columnist Wesley Young lays out ways in which local search marketers can use geolocation to their advantage.
Columnist Wesley Young shares insights from the latest LSA Local Media Tracking Study, advising marketers on local-mobile strategy for 2015.
Columnist Wesley Young discusses the importance of truly local data in search marketing decisions.
Who should small- and medium-sized businesses turn to for help with search marketing? Columnist Wesley Young of the Local Search Association starts the discussion.
Local marketing seems to change incredibly rapidly. Columnist Wesley Young shares the essential trends that you should be watching.
The path to purchase differs from product to product, but there's much all local businesses can learn from the "last mile" of the insurance-buying process.
If you thought people started their shopping on mobile then turned to their laptop or desktop to close the sale, you're mistaken. How consumers are negotiating the last mile of the purchase process.
When asked to rate their biggest challenges with managing digital media for their business, 47% of local business owners said they don’t have enough knowledge or expertise; 43% said they don’t have enough time; and 26% said they don’t have enough resources, according to a Local Search Association/Thrive Analytics survey conducted earlier this year. Furthermore, […]
Many local businesses today are overwhelmed by the variety of local marketing choices available. Unlike the old days when a small handful of advertising outlets would cover the majority of your audience, the sheer volume of marketing options has seemingly flattened the reach of each advertising channel. Business owners see all the different ways that […]
So much of search focuses on being found. But being found doesn’t do much good unless you’re also chosen. The only thing worse than not being found is being found and rejected from consideration. There’s no doubt that online reviews play an increasingly central role in the consumer path to purchase. Research consistently shows that […]
We all know that a key component of any small business’ marketing strategy is to effectively position its brand in search engine results. But is it possible to dominate search results with content you control — or at least content you’ve influenced? The answer is yes. There are simple and effective ways to boost visibility […]
Twitter has made headlines in recent weeks with the quiet launch of its experimental Nearby timeline, which allows eligible mobile users to discover tweets posted by others in their immediate vicinity, regardless of whether they are following them. This feature is currently available to a select number of users who have opted-in to allow their location […]
While the holiday season is undoubtedly a busy period for small business owners, it’s important to set aside time to plan your marketing strategy for the year ahead. How will you continue to maintain and grow your business in 2014? What plans do you have to keep your business on track and stay ahead of […]
There’s a lot of literature out there discussing what local businesses can do to improve their websites, ranging from boosting search visibility through targeted keywords to leveraging content like video to keep visitors engaged. But what’s often missing from these conversations are broader discussions about the importance of analytics in providing local businesses with ongoing and targeted […]
The vast majority of local businesses out there – even those heavily invested in digital and mobile marketing – are constantly looking for insights on how they can improve their placements in Google’s search engine results. While there’s plenty of advice available on specific tactics ranging from leveraging keywords and linking to boosting reviews and […]
Vertical offerings are playing an increasingly critical role, not only in attracting consumers and directing them to relevant local business listings, but also in providing consumers with the necessary tools to evaluate and directly make purchases. As verticals better enable consumers to simplify, speed up, and complete their path to purchase, local businesses need to […]
A company website is the core of most local businesses’ online presence. In fact, more than half of all SMB online marketing service dollars are spent on the Web presence category, including Web design and hosting, according to a Borrell Associates study released late last year. Yet, despite its central role, the vast majority of […]
If you’ve followed headlines about the online deals industry over the past year, you might wonder if the phenomenon has lost its appeal. The coverage often goes something like this: Major players in the space are restructuring. The addition of hundreds of redundant and niche sites have saturated the market. Local businesses are moving on […]
Recently, Facebook and Foursquare announced new features that will drastically change the ways local businesses leverage the social networks to build customer loyalty and drive new sales. With Facebook, the introduction of Graph Search provides businesses with greater incentive to invest time and effort in their presence on the site so they can appear among the […]